Save the Bay - Winter 2012

T P /CBF S OM ELTON TAFF

Last Look

Back to
the Future
Saving Dairy Farms and
the Chesapeake Bay

By Tom Pelton

M
any of the Chesapeake region’s dairy
farms have gone out of business over
the last two decades. Competition from
industrial-scale dairies in the West and
Midwest have made it hard for small fami-
ly farms to survive. The trend has been:
Get big, or get out.

Ron Holter and his son Adam have boosted the profitability of their family dairy farm
by switching to grazing, which also helps reduce pollution in the Bay.
TOM PELTON/CBF STAFF
Holter is an instructor in the Maryland
Grazers’ Network, a program organized by
CBF that encourages farmers to teach
other farmers about the virtues of man-
aged grazing. In this system, farmers regu-
larly shift cows from one fenced-in pad-
dock to another to keep the grass and ani-
mals healthy. The Grazers’ Network
recently expanded into Pennsylvania and
West Virginia.

including less money for feed, labor, and veterinary expenses.

But on the idyllic, rolling pastures of a 200- acre farm in Frederick County, Maryland, Ron Holter has found a way to keep his fifth-generation dairy business going. He is one of about 50 dairy farmers in Maryland that are boosting their profitability by going back in time.

Not all farmers have embraced the switch away from confining cows, which became the norm after World War II. Some conventional farmers, for example, complain that it would be hard to convert their corn fields to cow pastures, because they have millions of dollars invested in corn-harvesting machinery.

Instead of confining his 100 cows in a steel building and feeding them a corn and protein mash, Ron and the others are taking the seemingly radical step of letting their animals live outside and feed themselves by eating grass.

“Cows eating grass—ruminants of any
kind, eating grass—is the natural way,
the God-created way, for these animals to
live. They are not created to eat grain,”
Holter said, as he tended his cows with
his son, Adam, 21, a sixth-generation
dairyman. “You care about their welfare
because they are living beings. They are
not robots.”
Grazing tends to be better for water and air
quality than conventional farming.
Compared to corn farms and concentrated
animal feeding operations, pastures reduce
sediment runoff to nearby streams by 87
percent. The environment also benefits
from less fertilizer runoff and reduced
ammonia air pollution. Moreover, dairy
from cows that graze have more Omega- 3
fatty acids, which is good for the heart
health of consumers.

But which system treats farmers more humanely? Employees of many conventional dairy farms work around the clock, 365 days a year. But because grazing is less labor intensive, Ron Holter gets Christmas off and a lot more time to spend with his family.

But grazing isn’t just better for the world—
it’s also better for the bank accounts of
farmers. A University of Maryland study
found that Holter’s farm (as an example of
grazing) saves about $1,400 per cow per
year compared to a standard dairy farm,
Going back to the future has produced gifts
for Ron’s family and for everyone else—the
preservation of the Holters’ 1889 home-
stead and cleaner water for the streams that
feed the Chesapeake Bay.